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Ed sat up in bed late at night, book open on his thighs. As far as he knew, Lorraine slept beside him, weak body and mind knocked out. She curled herself in a ball to sleep, keeping her meager energy tucked in close. She had slept like that every night and nap since the eight days were over and she finally unlocked the bedroom door. Maybe she felt small, and it was a subconscious position. Maybe she felt safe with her nose tucked in close to her knees.
So when she stretched her legs out under the covers, shoulders shivering, Ed touched his knuckle to her shoulder.
“Hon?” he whispered, so softly. Hoping she might still be peacefully unconscious.
She twisted her torso to lie half on her back and face him. Hooded eyes and dark lips told him all he needed to know.
“I’m so cold,” she said anyway. Her lower jaw trembled.
She had already taken a long bath before dinner to help fight the persistent chills that followed her fever. Ed knew she wouldn’t want to get undressed and back into the tub again that night.
“I’ll make you some tea,” he said. He smoothed messy hair away from her face and kissed her temple. “Do you want anything else?”
She shut her eyes and shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
He painfully left her, a shivering heap in their bed.
While he waited for water to boil in the kettle, he slid open the back door and stood for a moment in the warm, dark air. September had gotten lost in their minds, after the exorcism that had nearly banished Lorraine to Hell, too, behind the door of their bedroom for over a week. Ed had been reunited with her for three days and she hadn’t built the energy yet to get around the house without his help. He hoped maybe tomorrow he could get her outside, onto the porch for fresh air. Her optimism was spotty – she felt weak, empty, and didn’t express much interest in anything but naps and toast. Ed’s suggestions of trips to the living room or the kitchen were still met by silence and then tears.
He was relieved she was at least eating. She had thrown up half of what he gave her for the first twenty-four hours, but her appetite was finally returning.
Inside, he steeped a bag of chamomile with a spoon of sugar and the drop of honey she liked. He brought the cup on a saucer back up the stairs.
Lorraine had curled herself back up, this time closer to the warm spot he had left behind on the sheets. She perked up at the promise of more warmth. Ed sat and waited for her to sit herself up before handing her the cup.
“Thank you.” She blew gently on the top.
He settled back in with his book and held his arm out, offering his side to her. She pulled her blanket up to surround herself again and she cuddled into him. Leaning her head on his shoulder, she sipped her tea.
“You want me to read to you?” Ed asked. He settled his arm around her waist.
She shook her head, eyes closed. She just wanted his quiet. Her head turned to press a kiss to his chest, letting him know she appreciated the offer.
“Okay.” He kissed her head. “Let me know when you want the light out.”
She nodded. “I love you.”
“I love you, honey.”
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By the time Lorraine brought giggling Judy back into the house, the wind had chilled them through. The golf course up the street became the neighborhood’s favorite spot on snow days. The two of them had been out all morning, until the snow matted up their mittens.
“There’s my girls,” said Ed as he managed to scoop Judy into the air to kiss her tummy. “How was sledding?”
“I went down the big hill by myself!” said Judy when he set her down, fists clenched in excitement. “Mommy watched.”
Ed caught Lorraine’s wide eyes and smile as she hung their coats in the front closet.
“I’ll bet Mommy was so proud of you.” Ed leaned in to kiss her cold cheek.
“Very proud,” said Lorraine.
“Not terrified at all, I’m sure.” Ed said it quietly in her ear, smirking as he returned to the kitchen.
Lorraine shook her head, watching Judy run in circles around the dining room table in a very eight-year-old effort to get warm.
“No, not at all. Besides,” she caught Judy mid-lap and peppered her cheeks with kisses, “you’re getting too big for me to fit on that sled with you anymore.”
Judy clung to her mother’s waist in a mess of giggles. Sometime in the last year or so, she had finally grown too big for Lorraine to lift her off the floor without preparation. It didn’t stop Judy from trying to climb on up herself, if she really wanted.
So watching Ed plop the little marshmallows on top of Judy’s hot chocolate in the kitchen while Judy bounced with her hands on the counter offered Lorraine some peace.
“Come sit at the table.” Ed ushered Judy over. She sat in her chair, toes happily kicking against the tile floor.
Lorraine leaned on the doorframe, pressing her hands on her cold cheeks. She watched Judy joyously licking chocolate off her lip.
Ed reappeared from behind the refrigerator door. Smiling softly, he handed Lorraine a mug of peppermint tea with milk. It warmed her hands.
“Thank you,” she said, voice and heart full of love. She held the mug to her chest, letting its steam and sweetness settle her. Her eyes, big with admiration, gazed up at Ed as she sipped.
He leaned against the fridge and she reached for his cheek, bringing him close enough for a few little kisses. She felt him smile.
Across the kitchen, Judy giggled into her marshmallows.
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The long-foreseen storm hit Connecticut hours before it was predicted to. In the middle of the night, an aggressive crescendo of thunder woke Lorraine and had her out of bed before Ed even began to stir. Her heart skittered in her chest. She tied her robe tightly around herself with unsteady hands and rounded the hallway, hand landing on the wall when more thunder shook her. She stood at Judy’s half-open door as the rain beat on the house. She didn’t want to disturb Juy if she wasn’t already awake.
Sure enough, a voice rose from the pile of blankets on Judy’s bed. “Momma?”
She sounded almost too small and afraid for a ten-year-old. Her head poked out from her bedspread.
“Did the thunder wake you, honey?” asked Lorraine.
“Yeah.”
Lightning lit up the walls. Lorraine winced. “It doesn’t seem like it’s gonna stop anytime soon. Do you want to come sit in the living room with me?”
She heard Ed emerging from the bedroom as Judy gathered an armful of blankets and stuffed animals to bring downstairs with her. She shuffled into Lorraine’s kiss on her forehead and followed her mother down the steps, careful not to trip on the corner of a quilt.
After brief begging, Lorraine let Judy turn the TV on a low volume, letting Johnny Carson tune out the storm at least a little.
Ed padded down the stairs in his boxers and T-shirt and offered a sleepy smile, flipping on a light in the kitchen. Judy had draped her blankets over both herself and Lorraine, curling up in Lorraine’s side, muscles tensing and relaxing with each clap of thunder. She wasn’t so young anymore that storms sent her running to her parents’ bed in the night, but she was her mother’s daughter and would never stop wanting the comfort when the noise made her chest shake.
Lorraine rested her head on the back of the couch and watched Ed’s shoulders and back as he moved in the kitchen, set to work with a mystery at the stovetop. She dragged her fingers through Judy’s hair. She hoped her own heartbeat was slow enough to soothe her; Lorraine’s nerves weren’t the sturdiest, either.
Her eyes flickered closed, praying for some rest. The rain and branches tapping the windows were too loud, too irregular to let her drifting turn into sleep.
She might have gotten frustrated if her unfulfilling floating wasn’t interrupted by Ed touching her shoulder.
“Can I sit with you?” he asked softly.
“Mm-hmm.” Lorraine blinked and felt his weight settle beside her. In his hand was a mug of tea, sweet herbal steam rising off the top. He held it out to her and ensured her hand was steady before removing his own.
Lorraine smiled wide and sipped, grateful for the warmth that sank through her and for her husband who knew she wouldn’t be able to rest otherwise. She watched as Ed leaned over to press a kiss to Judy’s head, eliciting a soft hum. She was almost asleep again already.
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September had drenched the bedsheets out on the futon with deliciously dry heat. Protected from bugs and too much sun by the screened-in porch, Lorraine stretched herself on the mattress and messy pillows. A wrinkled throw blanket bunched up around the top of her thigh, letting Ed soak up her bare body with his eyes.
(He had already done so with his hands and mouth and everything else.)
The instincts of the seventeen-year-old still within him wanted to tell her over and over how beautiful she was, but he had done it to death that day already. Whispered against the skin of her cheek, kissed into the inside of her thigh, groaned desperately into her ear when she made him feel so good he saw stars.
They had moved their daughter out of the house and into her college dorm a month before. They’d elected to greatly enjoy the rest of their summer out on the porch as much as possible, reading and talking and making love lazily in their diffused sunbeams where they could curl up like cats and nap afterward.
Ed’s fingertips grazed down Lorraine’s sternum. “Thirsty?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t think you already took sufficient care of that?”
“You’re funny.” He brought her hand up and kissed it with his smile. He stood and she watched him sleepily as he stepped through the open door to the kitchen. He had pulled on his little shorts and she got to admire his thighs and back and shoulders and half wished she could bring herself to get up and follow him, to pin him up against the counter and let him use those muscles in their favor again.
Instead, she let her endorphins make her head fuzzy and warm. She just gazed at him through the door as he poured two glasses of iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge. He brought her glass to her and she propped herself up to drink, relishing the coolness on her tongue.
He reached for his guitar that he had laid across a chair earlier and he scooted to sit back against the wall. His fingers gently plucked out the sunny melody of Julia and he sang softly enough that if Lorraine wanted to fall asleep, she could.
She drank her tea and set the glass on the coffee table and curled up around the pillows beside him. With her hand resting atop his thigh, thumb brushing back and forth, she watched the dappled sun shimmer on the screen.
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Listening to rain pattering on the windows, Lorraine cleaned up the kitchen to prepare for dinner. Any other time, for the entire history of their marriage, Ed was the better dinner cook and would usually be busy at the stove by the early evening. But it had been six weeks since the heart attack and the tunnels and everything that had broken them both, and Ed wasn’t quite able yet to summon the energy.
The weather didn’t help. The greyness made it hard for him to get up that morning and he was back in bed after lunch. Lorraine managed to get him out for a walk when the rain lulled for an hour, but he was slow and tired and had that heaviness in his eyes that hadn’t begun to lift yet.
He came up the stairs from the basement to get the mail, coming in and sorting through it at the counter.
Wiping around the sink with a rag, Lorraine asked, “Is there anything you want for dinner?”
He shook his head.
Lorraine searched his face for an explanation of what his response meant. “Will you eat?”
A still moment, uncertain, and then he said, “Yes.”
“Okay.” She wanted to lean on him, wrap her arms around his tired body and kiss his cheek and send as much goodness into his head as she could. But she risked suffocating him in the midst of his pain and he was already hard enough on himself for needing her so much.
She left her hands on the wet counter, leaning on it. Water and tiny bubbles on the tile reflected and scattered the dim light.
“Have you taken the pills today?”
“Yes, hon. I have.”
Lorraine knew from his voice that she had said precisely the wrong thing.
“Okay.”
Between thick sighs, neck tensing, he said, “I know I don’t have a great track record, but it’s been weeks, Lorraine. I know when to take the damn pills.”
“Okay.” Lorraine nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry, Ed. You’re right.”
When she looked up at him, little tears had swelled in his eyes. She reached her hand across the counter. “Ed –”
He turned away. He ran his hand over his face and tore himself away from the counter, opening the front door and letting it shut behind him.
Left in silence, Lorraine’s mind searched for his, relieved that he didn’t go farther than the front step. She dropped her head low. She breathed deep, refusing to allow any irritation of her own to settle into the space in her chest. It wouldn’t help either of them.
Knees unsteady, she held her elbows and crossed into the living room, peering through the sheer curtains in the front window. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, tapping on the gutters. Lorraine watched her husband’s mind beat him out on the stoop. At least he was dry under the awning.
Blinking away her own tears, she returned to the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove. She wanted to keep her hands occupied, tearing the paper off of tea bags, gathering two mugs and spoonfuls of honey and pours of milk. She rubbed her arms. She thought for a while, giving him time.
She knew Ed wasn’t angry with her. He hadn’t stopped blaming himself for every single thing that had happened in the last two months. He had barely begun allowing her to touch him when he cried at night, sick of his own weak body and determined to refuse her comforting him for the danger he was convinced he put her in. Hours had to be spent reminding him of her love and his innocence.
Lorraine held the handles of the cups together in her hand and approached the front door. When she opened it, she watched Ed for signs of his response to her presence. He only sat, arms on his knees, eyes low.
Standing beside him in the damp air, she touched her fingertips to his hair. He leaned against the touch.
As she sat, she kissed the top of his head before offering him one of the mugs in her hand. His deep eyes wavered and he took it, bringing it close between his hunched shoulders so he could smell it and feel its heat.
Lorraine watched the tears in his eyes tremble as he sipped, dense with something impossible to verbalize. She wrapped her arm around him, rubbing from his spine to his shoulder. When she leaned on him, he let her, settling his cheek atop her head.
I love you.
Lorraine held his unsteady hand and kissed it. I love you, honey.